Author: DW

Donald Trump has been accused of inadvertently drawing BRICS nations — a loose grouping of some of the world’s fastest-growing emerging economies — closer together by imposing higher tariffs on them than on other countries.  China, the largest BRICSmember, still faces the prospect of a 145% tariff if it can’t cut a deal with Trump, while Brazil and India have been slapped with a 50% rate — half of India’s penalty is for buying discounted Russian oil. South Africa was given a 30% levy, and even newer members like Egypt could see their tariffs go up, due to their participation in BRICS. Trump has repeatedly warned during the first seven…

Who is hosting? Following on from the last three editions, four nations will joint host the 2025 European Championship of basketball. Eurobasket, as it is commonly known, is to be played in Cyprus, Poland, Finland and Latvia this year. Cyprus hosts for the first time, as the sport looks to capitalize on the increased number of Europeans playing in the world’s most watched league, the National Basketball Association. Ukraine were set to be one of the four hosts before Poland stepped in. In January 2022, the word from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office was that hosting the tournament was one of his top…

Friedrich Merz and his Belgian counterpart Bart De Wever warned that seizing frozen Russian central bank assets to help Ukraine could set a dangerous legal precedent, or simply break the law.

Over the weekend, a controversial new law was presented to Iraq’s parliament after months of political wrangling. The law aims to regulate Iraq’s paramilitaries, the so-called Popular Mobilization forces, or PMF. Should it pass, its critics predict dire consequences. It would make “armed terrorist groups undermining Iraq’s sovereignty,” part of the official Iraqi military, the US State Department has warned. Supporters of the bill have a very different opinion, arguing that it could be a way of assimilating armed groups back into state institutions. That could allow “Iraq [to] finally break free of Iran’s two-decade-long influence over its politics,” Renad Mansour,…

In the main competition of the 2025 Venice International Film Festival, 21 international films will compete from August 27 for what is arguably the most prestigious film prizes in European cinema: the Golden Lion. A-list stalwarts from Julia Roberts to George Clooney and Cate Blanchett will feature on Venice screens, while politically charged features and documentaries will also mark this year’s film gala.   Roberts makes her first-ever stroll down the Lido for Luca Guadagnino’s “After the Hunt,” a #MeToo-inspired thriller. The Hollywood icon plays a Yale philosophy professor who’s put in a difficult position when her Ph.D. candidate and protegee…

German industry’s steady decline in employment figures continues, with the country’s prized automobile industry leading the pack, according to a new study from accounting giants EY (formerly known as Ernst & Young) based on data from the government’s statistics office.  EY recorded roughly 51,500 lost car industry jobs in the space of a year, equating to 6.7% of the sector’s total workforce. This made up almost half of the 114,000 industrial jobs lost in the same time period. The phenomenon also appears to be accelerating: Since 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, roughly 112,000 carmaking jobs have been lost in Germany —…

It was only at college that Hiwot Daniel realized she had been lonely as a child. Her father died when she was two years old, leaving her mother busy meeting basic needs. Growing up as an only child, no one asked Daniel questions like, “How was your day? What are you planning after school? Is there anything troubling you?” “There was no emotional support. I’m so thankful to my relatives because it was with their support that I got an education,” said Daniel. “[But] they focused more on financial support than on emotional support. They would say, ‘What do you…

US President Donald Trump on Monday said he is firing US Federal Reserve Governor Lisa, marking an unprecedented attempt to extend presdiential influence over the independent monetary body. Trump announced his intentions in a letter posted on his social media platform, Truth Social. He announced that he was removing Cook from her position, effective immediately, due to allegations that she obtained mortgage funds improperly. “I have determined that there is sufficient cause to remove you from your position,” he said in the letter. Trump went on to describe that Cook had signed two different addresses as primary residences in two different contracts,…

Tech billionaire Elon Musk on Monday filed a lawsuit against Apple and ChatGPT creator OpenAI. As part of the suit, he asserted that the two companies are engaged in a monopolistic collaboration which is putting his own artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, Grok, at a competitive disadvantage. What else do we know about the xAI lawsuit? Musk’s AI startup, xAI, alleged in the Texas lawsuit that Apple is preventing other chatbots from ranking above ChatGPT in its App Store, thus starving rivals such as Grok of valuable user interactions upon which the software relies to improve. Apple and OpenAI have therefore “locked up…

The scene: A pine forest near Izium, a city on the Donets River in eastern Ukraine. There are empty graves all around. This is where Russian soldiers buried the hundreds of civilians they killed in the spring of 2022. The graves are empty because the bodies in them have been exhumed for examination. Some of the people buried here were horribly tortured. Along with Bucha, a town northwest of Kyiv, this is the site of some of the most serious Russian war crimes committed in Ukraine. Petra, one of the visitors here on this day, simply notes that the sand…